shipping

I am looking into shipping some of my furniture I make and my question is should I make my furniture to where the customer has to assemble it or should I make it and ship it in one piece. What would ship better in one piece or in several pieces. Thanks for any advice.

There is a guy who builds tables and stuff like that with sliding dovetails,shipping the work flat. With the sliding joints the quality of the furniture is emotionally “dimensionalized” (or demonstrated and proved)when the customer learns about the joinery prior to buying andagain when assembling the work. From a marketing point of view,the sliding knock-down joinery is an excellent emotional “hook” in my opinion.

I’m not sure what your concern is but if it’s damage prevention I have a pretty good idea, at least I think it’s a good idea. I shipped a couple of tables to California to my brother-in-law for Christmas. I went to the store I work at, a furniture, and found two boxes just the right size and then found some of the styrofoam packing bits that is everpresent in the items that are received at the store and packed them up real nice and solid.There is many different types of styrofoam, very hard, dense foam, some that will crumble if you breath too hard on it, and everything in between. You can find pieces that fit corners, pieces that cover the corners from the top to the bottom, there are sheets, wedges, and blocks.I guess what I’m saying is that if you are just worried about the stuff getting damaged, go to a furniture store, if there is one near you, and ask the warehouse guys when they get trucks and be there. When they unpack the casegoods you can surley find some materials that will help you in packing yours. Sort of recycling too.Whether it cheapens your furniture or enhances the value in the eyes of the customer or not I don’t know but I’ll bet that you can get it to them in one piece and in good condition and that, I think, will at least show that you care about them and your work.

I would agree that break down furniture is really the way to go as far as shipping goes. It has a lot to do with what stile of furniture your selling and how much work and sophistication it will take for the purchaser to put it together.